STS.009: Darwinian Debate
Spring
Debater Fact Files
This document contains 1-page fact files on key actors in the debate about
Darwin’s Origin of Species in the 10 or so years after its publication.
The debater fact files are designed to support your participation in the
Darwinian debates.
Use the debater fact files to guide your choice of a character to “play” in
the Darwinian Debate, and as a starting-point for character research.
Points to remember:
•
Your choice of a character to “play” should reflect careful discussion and
agreement with your TA and the other students in your discussion
section, to ensure that all sides of the Darwinian debate are adequately
covered in the debate on the day;
•
It’s not necessary (or even particularly desirable) that you should
personally agree with the perspective of your chosen character; rather,
your task is to “adopt” that character’s point of view for the purposes of
the debate;
• Once you’ve chosen your character, your task is to prepare agreed
interventions in the debate in your own words, but in the spirit of the
character’s known views about Darwin’s Origin of Species;
• Ideally, when you get up to speak in the debate you should be thinking “in
role”, as if you were your character.
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12
STS.009: Darwinian Debate
FACT FILE #1
AGASSIZ, Louis
DATES
1807-1873
OCCUPATION/PROFESSION Professor of Natural History, University of
Neuchatel (Switzerland), then Professor of
Natural History, Harvard University
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
Biologist, geologist, ichthyologist, glaciologist
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Motier, near Freiburg (Switzerland).
Studied medicine & natural history, & did early
work on living and fossil fish of Central Europe
under the guidance of French biologist Georges
Cuvier. Agassiz was the first person to propose
that the earth had been subject to a past ice age
(1837).
He undertook a lecture tour at the Lowell
Institute in Boston in 1846, and then decided to
re-locate to the U.S. He joined the faculty of
Harvard University, where he established the
Museum of Comparative Zoology (1859).
BASIC ATTITUDE TO
Negative. He was Cuvierian in his thinking,
ORIGIN OF SPECIES
viewing species as distinct natural kinds
introduced successively during the history of life.
For Agassiz, each species possessed functional
integrity and “permanence of type”; one species
could not be gradually transformed into another.
MAIN ROLE IN DEBATE
Agassiz was the most prominent opponent of
Darwinism in the U.S. through to his death in
1873.
“The world has arisen in some way or another.
KEY QUOTATION(S) AND
How it originated is the great question, and
REFERENCES
Louis Agassiz, Evolution and
Permanence of Type, 1874
2
Darwin’s theory, like all other attempts to explain
the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I
believe he has not even made the best conjecture
possible in the present state of our knowledge.”
STS.009: Darwinian Debate
FACT FILE #2
FLEEMING JENKIN, Henry
DATES
OCCUPATION/PROFES
SION
AREA OF EXPERTISE
BIOGRAPHY
1833-85
Professor of Engineering, Edinburgh University
BASIC ATTITUDE TO
ORIGIN OF SPECIES
MAIN ROLE IN
DEBATE
KEY QUOTATION(S) and
REFERENCES:
http://www.victorianweb.
org/science/science_texts
/jenkins.html
[NB: the terms in which
the quotation opposite is
written are offensive to
us today; you should know
that such terms were
commonplace in the
Victorian period.]
3
Engineering and invention
Fleeming Jenkin was a friend and colleague of Lord
Kelvin’s, and he was heavily involved in the laying of
the transatlantic cable. He shared Kelvin’s views on
the age of the earth (see Kelvin fact file), but
added other criticisms of natural selection, not
least based on his (and Darwin’s) understanding of
the nature of inheritance.
A man of sincerely held religious convictions, which
may have played a part in his generally skeptical
attitude towards the Origin.
Though an engineer rather than a scientist, in 1867
he published what is often seen as one of the most
powerful critiques of the Origin.
A significant critic, to whom Darwin felt obliged to
respond at length.
“Suppose a white man to have been wrecked on an
island inhabited by negroes, and to have established
himself in friendly relations with a powerful tribe,
whose customs he has learnt. Suppose him to
possess the physical strength, energy, and ability of
a dominant white race, and let the food and climate
of the island suit his constitution; grant him every
advantage which we can conceive a white to
possess over the native… concede that in the
struggle for existence his chance of a long life will
be much superior to that of the native chiefs; yet
from all these admissions, there does not follow the
conclusion that, after a limited or unlimited number
of generations, the inhabitants of the island will be
white….”
STS.009: Darwinian Debate
FACT FILE #3
GRAY, Asa
DATES
OCCUPATION/PROFESSION
AREA OF EXPERTISE
1810-1888
Botanist
Botany, geographical distribution of plants
in North America
Gray was professor of botany at Harvard
University for many years. He became
America’s foremost botanist, completing
several floras. An early correspondent and
confidant of Darwin’s, he became the most
important advocate for Darwin’s Origin of
Species in the U.S. after 1859. A sincere
Christian, he also worked very hard to
reconcile natural selection theory with
Christian belief.
BIOGRAPHY
BASIC ATTITUDE TO ORIGIN
OF SPECIES
MAIN ROLE IN DEBATE
KEY QUOTATION(S) AND
REFERENCES
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/gray
-essay-design-versus-necessity
4
Positive. Gray was an evolutionist, and he
even acknowledged the role of natural
selection as an important evolutionary
mechanism. He developed a form of
“theistic evolution”, in which key individual
variations were divinely engineering as the
basis for important steps in the
evolutionary process.
A significant friend and supporter of
Darwin’s in the U.S., who also represented
an important influence in favor of
accommodation between Darwinism and
religious belief.
“Natural selection is not the wind which
propels the vessel, but the rudder which, by
friction, now on this side and now on that,
shapes the course.”
STS.009: Darwinian Debate
FACT FILE #5
HUXLEY, Thomas Henry
FACT FILE #4
HOOKER, Joseph Dalton
DATES
OCCUPATION/PROFESSION
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
BIOGRAPHY
1817-1911
Botanist, explorer, Director of Kew Gardens
Botany, geographical distribution of plants
The second son of the distinguished botanist Sir
William Jackson Hooker, Joseph Hooker studied
medicine at the University of Glasgow before
joining the Naval Medical Service and
accompanying a scientific expedition to the
Antarctic, on the basis of which he published
Flora Antarctica (1844-7), Flora Novae-Zelandiae
(1853-5) and Flora Tasmaniae (1855-60).
Hooker returned to London in 1855 to become
first Assistant Director and then Director of the
Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, rising quickly to
become Britain’s most eminent botanist.
BASIC ATTITUDE TO
ORIGIN OF SPECIES
MAIN ROLE IN DEBATE
KEY QUOTATION(S) AND
REFERENCES:
Very positive. From the outset, he was a key
member of Darwin’s “inner circle” of supporters
Hooker was Darwin’s closest friend and
confidante. He played a central part in arranging
for the joint Darwin/Wallace paper of 1858; he
participated with Huxley in the “Oxford debate”
in 1860, and his support for Darwin – coming from
the leading botanist in the country – was of great
significance.
" I am a sinner not to have written you ere this, if
only to thank you for your glorious book—what a
mass of close reasoning on curious facts and
fresh phenomena—it is capitally written and will
be very successful.... Lyell, with whom we are
staying, is perfectly enchanted, and is absolutely
gloating over it.”
(Letter to Darwin)
5
STS.009: Darwinian Debate
DATES
OCCUPATION/PROFESSION
FACT FILE #6
AREA OF EXPERTISE
BIOGRAPHY
BASIC ATTITUDE TO
ORIGIN OF SPECIES
MAIN ROLE IN DEBATE
KEY QUOTATION(S) AND
REFERENCES
Huxley, 'The origin of Species',
Westminster Review 17 (n.s.)
1860, pp. 541-70.
6
1825-1895
Academic professor, prolific essayist & advocate for
science, became a first generation ‘scientific
KINGSLEY, Charles
mandarin’
Biology, geology, evolution, place of science in
culture, education, including workers’ education;
science & public affairs
Extensively self-taught son of a school-teacher;
undertook a voyage of exploration as Assistant
Surgeon on HMS Rattlesnake; Professor of Natural
History, Royal School of Mines, 1854-1885; became
very prominent in public life, serving on 8 Royal
Commissions, and led the movement for the
professionalization of science in Britain
Positive; insisted that scientists should be free to
develop naturalistic theories of origins free from
the influence of theology
A member of Darwin’s “inner circle”, he was an
influential supporter of the Origin of Species in
public. However, he was consistently skeptical
about natural selection as the principal cause of
evolutionary change.
“Everybody has read Mr. Darwin's book, or, at least,
has given an opinion upon its merits or demerits;
pietists, whether lay or ecclesiastic, decry it with
the mild railing which sounds so charitable; bigots
denounce it with ignorant invective; old ladies of
both sexes consider it a decidedly dangerous book,
and even savants, who have no better mud to throw,
quote antiquated writers to show that its author is
no better than an ape himself; while every
philosophical thinker hails it as a veritable
Whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism; and all
competent naturalists and physiologists, whatever
their opinions as to the ultimate fate of the
doctrines put forth, acknowledge that the work in
which they are embodied is a solid contribution to
knowledge and inaugurates a new epoch in natural
history.”
STS.009: Darwinian Debate
DATES
OCCUPATION/PROFESSION
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
BIOGRAPHY
BASIC ATTITUDE TO ORIGIN OF
SPECIES
MAIN ROLE IN DEBATE
KEY QUOTATION(S) and
REFERENCES:
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry2534
"Darwin is conquering everywhere and
rushing in like a flood, by the mere
force of truth and fact." (1863)
7
1819-1875
Anglican clergyman, Regius Professor of
Modern History, University of Cambridge,
novelist
Christianity, history, natural history, social
reform
Second son of Rev. Charles Kingsley, he
followed his father into the Anglican
ministry as Rector of Eversley in Hampshire
(1844). In 1860, he was appointed Regius
Professor of Modern History at Cambridge.
He was a prolific and popular author, and
had interests that spanned natural science,
literature, the arts and social questions.
Generally friendly with the Darwin circle, he
had a significant correspondence with
Huxley.
Positive. He was quickly persuaded to accept
Darwin’s general approach.
As a respected Anglican clergyman, Kingsley
was an extremely significant early supporter
of the Origin (see his letter to Darwin,
below)
“All I have seen of [the Origin] awes me;
both with the heap of facts, & the prestige
of your name, & also with the clear intuition,
that if you be right, I must give up much that
I have believed & written. In that I care little.
‘Let God be true, & every man a liar’….I have
gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble
a conception of Deity, to believe that he
created primal forms capable of self
development into all forms needful pro
tempore & pro loco, as to believe that He
required a fresh act of intervention to
supply the lacunas wh. he himself had made. I
question whether the former be not the
loftier thought.”
STS.009: Darwinian Debate
FACT FILE #7
LYELL, Charles
DATES
OCCUPATION/PROFESSION
1797-1875
Lawyer by training, gentleman geologist by
profession
Historical geology; antiquity of man
The son of a wealthy Scottish landowner, Lyell
trained as a lawyer in Oxford but there fell under
the influence of William Buckland. He undertook
important geological filed excursions in Britain and
continental Europe, and authored the The
Principles of Geology (3 vols., 1831-4), arguably the
most influential geological work of the mid-19th
century. Lyell was a close friend and supporter of
Darwin’s; he was involved with Hooker in arranging
for the joint Darwin-Wallace publication in 1858.
AREA OF EXPERTISE
BIOGRAPHY
BASIC ATTITUDE TO
ORIGIN OF SPECIES
MAIN ROLE IN DEBATE
KEY QUOTATION(S) AND
REFERENCES
Charles Lyell, The Antiquity of
Man (1863), 470.
8
Positive. The principal advocate of
“uniformitarianism” in geology, Lyell quickly
accepted Darwin’s idea of descent with
modification as a logical extension of uniformitarian
principles into biology. He was seriously concerned
about squaring evolution with his religious beliefs,
and was reluctant to accord natural selection the
principal role in evolution. He was also concerned
about man’s place in nature, and only gradually
accepted a naturalistic account of human origins in
the late-1860s.
Friend, confidant and advisor of Darwin’s, Lyell also
authored an important early work on human
prehistory, The Antiquity of Man (1863).
“The question now at issue, whether the living
species are connected with the extinct by a
common bond of descent, will best be cleared up by
devoting ourselves to the study of the actual state
of the living world, and to those monuments of the
past in which the relics of the animate creation of
former ages are best preserved and least mutilated
by the hand of time.”
STS.009: Darwinian Debate
FACT FILE #8
MIVART, St George
Jackson
DATES
OCCUPATION/PROFESSION
AREA OF EXPERTISE
1827-1900
English biologist
Biology, evolutionary theory, science and
religion
Brought up an evangelical, Mivart
converted to Catholicism. Professor of
Zoology, St Mary’s Hospital Medical
School, he was twice Vice-President of
the Zoological Society of London.
Mivart was a colleague and acquaintance
of Huxley’s, but there was a personal rift
between them as Mivart’s view of the
Origin became more negative. Mivart was
a zoologist with a keen interest in the
relationship between science and
religious belief (especially Catholicism).
Changed from positive to negative.
Mivart initially responded favorably to
the Origin. But he became skeptical
about natural selection as a principal
cause of evolution, and wrote
increasingly negative reviews of the
Origin and the Descent of Man.
A significant critic, to whom Darwin felt
obliged to respond at length in later
editions of the Origin of Species.
BIOGRAPHY
BASIC ATTITUDE TO ORIGIN
OF SPECIES
MAIN ROLE IN DEBATE
KEY QUOTATION(S) AND
REFERENCES
Mivart, On the Genesis of Species,
1871, available at:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2
0818
9
"As to 'natural selection', I accepted it
completely and in fact my doubts &
difficulties were first excited by
attending Prof. Huxley's lectures at the
School of Mines."
STS.009: Darwinian Debate
FACT FILE #9
OWEN, Richard
DATES
OCCUPATION/PROFESSI
ON
AREA OF EXPERTISE
1804-1892
Medically trained, biologist, paleontologist,
BIOGRAPHY
Trained in medicine at Edinburgh, worked in
comparative anatomy first at Royal College of
Surgeons & then as Superintendent of Natural
History at British Museum; oversaw plans for
new Natural History Museum in South
Kensington, London. Renowned for his work on
extinct reptiles, coining the term “Dinosauria”.
Much honored, he was nonetheless seen as
ungenerous towards his colleagues and was
involved in controversy over not properly
acknowledging the work of others in his
publications.
Negative. Though inclined towards an
evolutionary view of the history of life, he
denied that Darwin had made a significant
contribution to understanding the nature of
the evolutionary process. He “schooled” Samuel
Wilberforce in his critique of the Origin
A principal early critic of the Origin of Species,
he became a particular target of Thomas
Huxley, especially in the debate about the
“hippocampus minor”.
BASIC ATTITUDE TO
ORIGIN OF SPECIES
MAIN ROLE IN DEBATE
KEY QUOTATION(S) AND
REFERENCES
http://www.victorianweb.org
/science/science_texts/owen
_review_of_origin.html
http://darwinonline.org.uk/content/frame
set?itemID=A30&viewtype=t
ext&pageseq=1
1
0
Comparative anatomy, biology, geology,
evolution, natural history museums
“But, as we have before been led to remark,
most of Mr. Darwin's statements elude, by their
vagueness and incompleteness, the test of
Natural History facts. “
STS.009: Darwinian Debate
FACT FILE #10
THOMSON, William (1st Baron
Kelvin)
DATES
OCCUPATION/PROFESSION
AREA OF EXPERTISE
BIOGRAPHY
1824-1907
Physicist, engineer & inventor
Physics, mathematics, engineering innovation
Born in County Antrim, Ireland, the son of an
academic mathematician and engineer,
Thomson studied at Glasgow and Cambridge
Universities and was appointed Professor of
Natural Philosophy at Glasgow at age 22. He
worked in electro-magnetism and
thermydynamics, was a prolific inventor, and
was heavily involved in the laying of the
transatlantic cable. Multiply honored, he
became the leading British physical scientist
of the mid-Victorian period. A man of
sincerely held religious convictions, which
played a part in his generally skeptical attitude
towards Darwinian evolutionary theory.
BASIC ATTITUDE TO ORIGIN
Kelvin published calculations concerning the
sun’s heat that suggested the earth was not
anywhere near so old as the uniformitarian
geologists (and Darwinians) claimed. These
calculations proved to be one of the most
challenging of all the technical criticisms
faced by Darwin after 1859.
A significant critic, to whom Darwin and
Huxley felt obliged to respond at length.
OF SPECIES
MAIN ROLE IN DEBATE
KEY QUOTATION(S) AND
REFERENCES
Kelvin, On the Secular Cooling of
the Earth, Transactions of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh, Vol.
XXIII, pp. 167-169, 1864. Read April
28, 1862. Available at:
http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/o
n_the_secular_cooling_of_the_eart
h.html
1
1
"But I think we may with much probability say
that the consolidation [of the earth] cannot
have taken place less than 20,000,000 years
ago, or we should have more underground
heat than we actually have, nor more than
400,000,000 years ago, or we should not have
so much as the least observable underground
increment of temperature."
STS.009: Darwinian Debate
FACT FILE #11
WALLACE, Alfred Russel
DATES
OCCUPATION/PROFESSION
AREA OF EXPERTISE
1823-1913
Naturalist, writer
Evolutionary theory, natural history,
biogeography
Largely self-taught; son of an unsuccessful
lawyer; undertook 2 major voyages of
exploration; co-founder of theory of
evolution by natural selection; strong
supporter of “survival of the fittest” as the
principal mechanism of organic evolution;
espouser of many radical causes, including
religion (especially spiritualism), politics
(socialism; land nationalization), women’s
suffrage, anti-vaccination.
BIOGRAPHY
BASIC ATTITUDE TO
ORIGIN OF SPECIES
MAIN ROLE IN DEBATE
KEY QUOTATION(S) AND
REFERENCES
Wallace, Darwinism, An
Exposition of the Theory of
Natural Selection with some of
its applications, London,
Macmillan, 1901, pp 8-9.
1
2
Positive. Wallace was an immediate supporter
of Darwin’s book, and wrote some of the most
persuasive popular accounts of his and
Darwin’s theory in the late-19th century
A principal supporter of ‘Darwinism’ in natural
history, in the mid-1860s he became a skeptic
about Darwinism’s ability to explain crucial
features of human evolution
“Before Darwin’s work appeared, the great
majority of naturalists…held firmly to the
belief that species were realities, and had not
been derived from other species by any
process accessible to us…But now all this is
changed. The whole scientific and literary
world, even the whole educated public,
accepts, as a matter of common knowledge,
the origin of species from other allied species
by the ordinary process of natural birth. The
idea of special creation…is absolutely
extinct!”
STS.009: Darwinian Debate
FACT FILE #12
WILBERFORCE, Samuel
DATES
OCCUPATION/PROFESS
ION
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
BIOGRAPHY
1805-1873
English Bishop in the Church of England, Bishop
of Oxford
Christian religion, public speaking
Third son of William Wilberforce, the evangelical
renowned for his work on behalf of the abolition
of the slave trade. A graduate of Oxford, Samuel
rose quickly in the Church of England, serving as
Chaplain to Prince Albert and Subaltern to the
Queen. He became Dean of Westminster and
Bishop of Oxford in 1845.
Renowned as a public speaker. He was known as
“Soapy Sam” after Prime Minister Benjamin
Disraeli described his manner as “unctuous,
oleaginous, saponaceous”.
BASIC ATTITUDE TO
ORIGIN OF SPECIES
MAIN ROLE IN DEBATE
KEY QUOTATION(S)
AND REFERENCES
http://darwinonline.org.uk/content/fram
eset?itemID=A19&viewtype
=text&pageseq=1
1
3
Negative; he is renowned, above all, for leading
the charge against the Origin of Species in a
public debate at the annual meeting of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science in
Oxford in the summer of 1860. His run-in at the
debate with Thomas Huxley became the talk of
the town.
Following the Oxford debate, Wilberforce became
a symbol of theological opposition to the Origin.
“Was it through his grandfather or his
grandmother that he claimed his descent from a
monkey?” (Addressed to Huxley in the Oxford
debate)
“A rotten fabric of guess and speculation” (on
Darwin’s theory)
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STS.009 Evolution and Society
Spring 2012
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